barely a house, never a home
by windofbanners
Summary: In this house, there are no photos, no preserved childhood drawings, no report cards hung with pride on the refrigerator. There is no note on the kitchen table explaining her mother's absence not this time, not the last time, not any time . She has been forgotten. / Sam-centric. Oneshot.


A/N: A oneshot looking at the relationship between Sam and her mother. Written because although it's fantastic, essentially iCarly is a kid's show and in real life, such a relationship would be so much more complicated than Sam makes it seem.

Because no matter how much you hate your parents or love your parents, there's no way you can ever deny your parents, because it's _their_ blood that runs through your veins, it's _their_ choices that mold you into the shape of the person you are, and it's _their_ shadow that you will walk in forever, whether it be a shade that protects or a darkness that haunts.

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_"Well, now_

_If little by little you stop loving me_

_I shall stop loving you_

_Little by little_

_If suddenly you forget me_

_Do not look for me_

_For I shall already have forgotten you_

_~ Pablo Neruda_

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Sam rolls the smart blue suitcase up to her side and sets it next to her. She glances behind her, into the apartment.

She had never felt any love for the place, but seeing as it's her last time here, she decides that it was worth one final looking back. So she lets her eyes rove around the apartment and it's contents, taking in the details.

There's a dingy couch across a television set that has a large crack splitting its screen. A scuffed coffee table bridges the distance between the two. There are piles of unread newspapers and magazines in every corner, the purpose of which Sam never understood. She spares a slight nod for the grimy loveseat, which has suffered formidable _loving_by her mother and all her boyfriends, and bears the stains to prove it.

The counters separate the living room from the kitchen. There's letters on the wooden table that she knows are filled with bills, a grimy refrigerator that she knows is filled with beer, and a dull sink that she sees is piled with dishes. One of the sticky cabinet doors has swung open, and is swaying faintly in the stale breeze from the ventilation.

She can see the entrance to the hall, and she traces the path in her mind that leads to the bedrooms. There's Melanie's, pink and pristine, filled with carefully cut out pictures of things like sunsets and a fine layer of dust that makes the room seem like it's waiting for someone to brush it off. There's her mother's, dark and gloomy, littered with beer bottle and with the curtains always drawn to prevent sunlight from leaking through. Her own has been stripped and devoid of life and items. Whatever didn't make it into her suitcase is sitting happily in the dumpster right now.

The entire house is lit in an eerie glow because the lights are dim and dingy. A light stutters in response to her thoughts, and she glances up instinctively. The silhouettes of dead flies mottle the glass on the ceiling lights, dimming the lights even further. Melanie used to unscrew the glass bowls and dump the bodies over the balcony, but Sam's too lazy, and her mother's too drunk.

For a moment, she allows herself to stop looking and _feel_, and the muscle inside her chest instantly aches for a home like Carly's filled with color and light and noise that seems to be the cure for loneliness, or even one like Freddie's, because even though it's frickin sterilized, there is a wall that she can't help but look at every time she goes there, a wall filled with photos that have been carefully framed and hung, photos that say: _you were so precious to me I dropped everything to savor this moment with you_.

In this house, there are no photos, no preserved childhood drawings, no report cards hung with pride on the refrigerator. There are no trophies displayed on coffee tables, no awkward school photos that she feels the need to hide, no backpacks sitting on the couch or jackets hanging near the door (the only backpack she has is on her back and the only clothes she own are rolled neatly into her suitcase).

There is nothing to prove she was ever there.

There is no note on the kitchen table explaining her mother's absence (not this time, not the last time, not any time). There are no afternoon snacks waiting for her (the refrigerator is filled with beer), and there is nothing in the house that has been touched with a loving hand (Melanie is too busy and Sam is too rough and her mother is always too drunk). There is no father, no sister, and most of all, no mother, gracing the emptiness with their presence.

She has been forgotten.

She suddenly feels like a stranger that has walked into another's home, instead of the resident that is leaving it. When she leaves, what part of her will be left behind for anyone to miss? What will be there to remind someone of her face, her voice, a memory that was shared and cherished, what will remain as proof that she existed in this space, that this was the place she came back to at night for more than seven years?

Her mother, she thinks bitterly, will barely notice her absence, and will never notice the difference. Maybe she will wonder where Sam is one night, or mention to a boyfriend that she has a daughter, but at the end of the day, to the ends of time, her mother will sleep on the grubby loveseat and drink from her green-glass bottles and forget that she ever had a daughter named Sam.

Weakness pools in her eyes, but Sam tightens her lips and tilts her head upwards to keep it from falling, willing anger to sweep in instead. There's more than enough of that to go around, so Sam lets herself lower her eyes and clench her fists.

Because _god_, she loves that woman with every beating cell in her heart and every fragile bone in her body, but _god_, sometimes she wants to stab a knife into that woman she calls mother and watch her bleed out on the dirty carpet that has never seen a good cleaning.

A mother is supposed to sacrifice for her children, not leave her five year olds alone for a week with nothing in the house to eat except peanut butter. Knowing that her mother never loved her enough to care – that will forever haunt her, remind her that she was never enough. Because sure, finding people who don't have to love her, love her, gives her hope, but the fact that the very person who is supposed to love her, doesn't love her, will linger in the very air she breathes.

Sam wants so badly to be able to tell herself that she doesn't care if she will be forgotten (wants so badly to not care that she _has been_ forgotten for a long time), but every time she tries, the lies lie slick and oily on her skin, suffocating her like the layers of dust that choke the rooms. So she skirts around the issue instead and stashes it in the back of her mind just above boxed topics like _My Father_ and _Freddie Benson_, only facing the truth when she needs to.

But it's time for _Her Mother_ and _This House_ to join those broken thoughts for good, because though Sam may be weak, she is never letting herself come back to this broken place that barely provided enough for her to leave and holds nothing for her to come back to, that housed a woman and her child but never a mother and her daughter. When she leaves today, she will burn this bridge behind her.

There will be no regrets.

She tears a bite off the beef jerky she's holding in one hand and jerks the suitcase over the threshold with another. She turns and looks one last time inside the apartment (_barely a house, never a home_) before slamming the door shut, ignoring the muffled shouts of the neighbors that erupt around her.

She stomps down the hallway for the last time, relishing the hard snaps of her heeled boots against the cheap linoleum, before she disappears around the corner.

She leaves no note for her mother.

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_If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life_

_And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots_

_Remember_

_That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms_

_And my roots will set off to seek another land"_

_~ Pablo Neruda_

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**A/N 2:** READ ME! I'm having title troubles; which one do you guys like better? _proof of my existence_ or _barely a house, never a home_?

I was having trouble deciding, so now it's up to you. So let me know what you think through a wonderful review! (Rhyming FTW)


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